History Belongs to the Intercessors
Sunday, August 25, 2013 | Susan Russell | All Saints Church, Pasadena
Twenty years ago this month
I went on a transformational
journey.
My family packed up and moved
– lock, stock and canines –
from the Central Coast to the
Inland Empire
for me to embark on a
vocational adventure called
“journey to priesthood.”
We leased our home, rented a townhouse,
moved my boys … then 12 and 9
… into new schools
and I prepared to enter the
Claremont School of Theology
as a thirtysomething
seminarian.
There was, needless to say, a
lot riding on me,
on the bishop and on the commission
on ministry
having gotten it right on
this
“called to ordained ministry”
thing.
Oh, I looked good on paper.
My undergrad transcripts were
strong,
my recommendations were solid
and the psychologist had
signed off on me.
But it had been 17 years since
I’d taken my brain out for a walk
and I was hoping I could
still cut the academic mustard
after my multi-year soccer
mom sojourn.
My first day was a jam packed
blur of
Introduction to Old
Testament,
History of Christianity
and Major Christian
Doctrines.
By the time I got to my third
class – the doctrines class –
my head was swimming
with words like “ontological”
and “hermeneutic” and “sacerdotal”
but I was hanging in there.
And then – after spending 90
minutes
with my head barely managing
to brush up against the bottom
of the words
of the professor’s introductory
lecture –
he got to the part where he
said
he didn’t need to bother to
explain the Aristotelian theory of Causality
because we wouldn’t be in the
class
if we hadn’t passed the
philosophy pre-requisite.
And I kinda lost it.
I held it together getting to
the car to head for home.
But then at the red light at
Foothill and Indian Hill I started to cry –
not the subtle, sniffing,
tears-leaking-gracefully down
your cheeks kind –
but the gasping for breath,
wracking sobs kind
that makes you miss the light
turning green
and has impatient drivers
honking at you.
What if I couldn’t do it?
What if everyone was wrong?
What if it was all a big,
horrible cosmic mistake?
It was, to say the least, not
an auspicious start.
And once I got over myself I
did fine. I actually did more than fine.
At Claremont between 1993 and
1996
I studied Hebrew Scriptures
with Jim Sanders,
New Testament with Marcus
Borg,
Feminist Theology with
Rosemary Radford Reuther
and Anglican polity with …
Gary Hall.
I had the privilege of a
truly extraordinary seminary education
in a broadly diverse,
ecumenical community
with gifted scholars,
prophetic preachers and creative liturgists.
And I read … a lot. And I
remembered … some.
And so when I left seminary
I took with me not just a
degree to hang on the wall
but I carried with me the
internalized voices
of a whole host of what Ed
Bacon calls “balcony people”
I’d never actually met —
but whose work and witness
informed
both my studies as a
seminarian
and my ministry as priest and
pastor.
Fredrica Harris Thompsett –
who taught me that
“the reason we back up to
learn from our history
is to get a running start on
our future.”
Rabbi Abraham Heschel –
who taught me that
we don’t just pray with the
words we use from the prayer book …
we pray with the feet we use
to march for justice.
And Walter Wink –
who taught me that
“History belongs to the
intercessors, who believe the future into being.”
That, my brothers and
sisters,
is the business we are about
here at All Saints Church –
whether we’re gathering in
church on Sunday morning for worship
or gathering on the steps of
City Hall on Monday afternoon for a press conference.
When we knit prayer shawls
to comfort those suffering
from loss or illness
and when we knit justice
coalitions
to confront those causing
suffering
for the oppressed and the marginalized.
It is all the same work.
It is all the same high
calling.
It is all part and parcel of
making God’s love tangible 24/7
as we believe into being a
future
where our human race finally
becomes
the human family it was
created to be;
our nation finally becomes
the nation with liberty and
justice for all
it was conceived to be;
and when our churches finally
become
the vehicles for God’s love
and grace –
for absolutely everybody –
that they are meant to be.
Eleven years ago this month
I went on another
transformational journey.
On August 1, 2002 I left a
great job
as Associate Rector and Day
School Chaplain at St. Peter’s, San Pedro
and moved into the corner
cubicle in the “temporary trailer”
here at All Saints Church
to start the work of a new
initiative we called “Claiming the Blessing.”
Our stated goal was
“abolishing prejudice and
oppression,
and healing the rift between
sexuality and spirituality in the Church.”
Our initial commitment
was obtaining approval of a
liturgical blessing
of the faithful, monogamous
relationship between two adults of any gender.
And when one of our founding
members –
a guy named Gene Robinson –
maybe you’ve heard of him –
was elected by the Diocese of
New Hampshire to be their 9th bishop,
our agenda expanded to
include securing consents to his election.
Remember that in 2003
marriage equality had not yet
come to Massachusetts –
much less anywhere else;
“Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell” was
still in force in the military,
the White House was
supporting a “Federal Marriage Amendment”
that would write
discrimination into our Constitution …
and “Modern Family” wasn’t
even on the drawing board yet.
And that was just in the
civic arena.
In the church,
the schismatics were
marshaling their forces
to turn the fuller inclusion
of LGBT people in the Episcopal Church
into the wedge they’d been
looking for to split the church
they’d failed to rent asunder
over the ordination of women
when they tried to in the
70’s.
It was quite arguably a hot
mess.
And yet, there were
intercessors who dared to believe a future into being.
A future set free from the
bondage
of homophobia, bigotry and
discrimination
as surely as Jesus set free
the woman from the bondage of
her illness in this morning’s gospel.
A future of the full
inclusion of all the baptized
in all the sacraments in our
Church,
of equality for LGBT people
in our country
and of the healing of the
homophobia that infects our human family.
They learned their history
in order to get a running
start on their future –
like Fredrica Harris
Thompsett taught them to do.
They prayed with their feet,
up and down the convention
center halls
and in and out of legislative
committee meetings –
like Abraham Heschel
challenged them to do.
They believed the future into
being
as Walter Wink challenged
them to do.
And in 2003
against a lot of odds and in
face of organized opposition
Gene Robinson became the
Bishop of New Hampshire
and the Episcopal Church
took another step toward the
blessing of same-sex unions.
And a decade later the
journey is not over
and the work is not yet done
but on Friday evening
when I presided at the
marriage of Jack and John
who have been together for 37
years
and who flew here from
Georgia
with the blessing of their
parish priest
to be married in the sight of
God
and by the power vested in me
by the State of California
I had a glimpse of the
kingdom come
as we stood there in the
Silverlake garden
on the shoulders of the
intercessors
who had believed that moment
into being.
And that – my brothers and
sisters – is something to
rejoice and be glad in.
And because there is still
much work to be done, I invite you to hear with me these words from our brother
Walter Wink from his book “The Powers that Be:”*
History
belongs to the intercessors who believe the future into being.
This
is not simply a religious statement.
It
is also true of capitalists or anarchists.
The
future belongs to whoever can envision a new and desirable possibility, which
faith then fixes upon as inevitable.
This
is the politics of hope.
Hope
envisages its future
and
then acts as if that future is now irresistible,
thus
helping to create the reality for which it longs.
The
future is not closed.
Even
a small number of people,
firmly
committed to the new inevitability
on
which they have fixed their imaginations,
can
decisively affect the shape the future takes.
These
shapers of the future are the intercessors,
who
call out of the future the longed-for new present.
In
the New Testament,
the
name and texture and aura of that future
is
God’s domination-free order, the reign of God.
When
we pray we are not sending a letter
to a
celestial White House,
where
it is sorted among piles of others.
We
are engaged, rather,
in
an act of co-creation,
in
which one little sector of the universe
rises
up and becomes translucent, incandescent,
a
vibratory centre of power that radiates the power of the universe.
History
belongs to the intercessors, who believe the future into being.
If
this is so, then intercession,
far
from being an escape from action,
is a
means of focusing for action and of creating action.
By
means of our intercessions
we
veritably cast fire upon the earth and trumpet the future into being.” [“The Powers that Be: Theology for a New Millennium” by
Walter Wink]
Fifty years ago this week,
over two hundred thousand
intercessors gathered in Washington DC
to “cast fire upon the earth
and trumpet the future into being”
in an act of co-creation
a vibratory centre of the
power of love, justice and compassion
engaged to triumph over
bigotry, racism and oppression
calling out of the future
a longed for new present
of jobs and freedom for all
Americans.
We hear again this morning
the words from Martin Luther
King’s historic “I Have A Dream” speech
reminding us that the holy work
of believing the future into being
will never be done until
there are no strangers left at the gate,
until no member of the human
family
is placed outside the embrace
of love, justice and compassion,
and every
hill shall be exalted and every mountain shall be made low,
the rough places
will be made plains
and the crooked
places will be made straight
and the glory of
the Lord shall be revealed
and all flesh –
ALL flesh -- shall see it together.
The moral arc of
the universe
is about the
transformation of that which "is"
to that which
"can and must be."
That includes the
redemption of every single life,
transformed with
the vision of a more just and equal world;
a vision that Dr.
King dreamed of and preached about 50 years ago this week.
The most
dangerous mistake we can make
is to be blind to
the continued injustice
or assume that
the moral arc of the universe moves towards justice on its own and that we are
not a part of the bending.**
Dr. King famously
declared that, as a people,
we
are bound up into a "single garment of destiny.”
That
single garment of destiny means
there
is no rest for any of us until there is freedom and equality for all of us.
The
single garment of destiny means
the
struggle for civil rights, the struggle for LGBT equality,
the
struggle for reproductive rights, the struggle for immigration reform,
the
struggle for economic justice, the struggle to end gun violence …
whatever struggle challenges any
member of the human family
challenges
the whole human family.
And
as intercessors who believe the future into being,
we
will not rest until “we shall overcome” has become “we have overcome.”
Together
we are all on a transformational
journey
to
turn “thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven”
from
a prayer we pray
to
a reality we live.
In
a moment we will gather at this table
we
will receive the bread and wine made holy
to
give us strength for the journey
as
we go out into the world in desperate need
of
the good news of God’s love and justice and compassion.
History
belongs to the intercessors,
who
believe the future into being.
We are the intercessors
and
may God give us grace
to
claim that high calling in our generation
as
those who have gone before us
have
claimed in it in theirs.
Let
us pray.
"Holy God, you promised
Abraham and Sarah that you would bless them so that their descendants would be
a blessing to all humankind. As Jacob
wrestled with you throughout the night, refusing to let you go until you
blessed him, grant each of us the courage to claim your blessing as our
birthright. And then open our ears so that we can hear what your Holy Spirit is
saying as we move forward into your future as vehicles of your love, justice
and compassion – blessed in order to be a blessing to your whole human family.
Amen."***
====
* Walter Wink, "The Powers that Be: Theology for a New Millennieum
** adapted from Paul Raushenbauch, Huffington Post
*** adapted from Collect for Claiming the Blessing, by John Clinton Bradley
Zelda Kennedy ... closing the bell ringing with prayer ... and let the people say: AMEN!
(RNS) The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America on Wednesday (Aug. 14) elected the Rev. Elizabeth Eaton as the denomination’s first female presiding bishop. Eaton received 600 votes against incumbent Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson, who received 287.
SAN FRANCISCO -- The California Supreme Court refused Wednesday to revive Proposition 8, ending the last remaining legal challenge to same-sex marriage in the state. Meeting in closed session, the state high court rejected arguments by ProtectMarriage, Proposition 8’s sponsors, that only an appellate court could overturn a statewide law -- rejecting Prop. 8 Proponents’ last-ditch effort to revive Proposition 8. Following the resumption of marriage equality in California on June 28, Prop. 8 Proponents filed a lawsuit seeking to limit where gay and lesbian couples could marry to only two California counties.
Debate over same-sex marriage is raging these days in the United States, be it in the courts, the media, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and even among one's friends and family. Deep beneath the breakers runs a broad stream of little-known history that might bring some calm.
